You've seen dollhouses, but you haven't seen the graceful art of 1/12 scale rooms like those of Chris Toledo! His subject matter is historic interiors, so detailed that you wouldn't know they were miniatures if he didn't include something else, like his hand, for scale.





Some of Toledo's creations are for sale. See more at his website and at Instagram. -via Nag on the Lake

The River Thames in London is a treasure trove of historical artifacts, and there are plenty of people whose hobby involves looking for those artifacts between the high and low tide marks. This activity is called mudlarking. It began as a way for the poorest of the poor to find something worth selling, but now attracts those with an interest in history as told by the objects people left behind. Lara Maiklem has been mudlarking all her life, as she details in her book Mudlark: In Search of London’s Past Along the River Thames. Maiklem explains why the Thames is such a rich depository for items lost or discarded over thousands of years.   

"There are lots of reasons for all the stuff in the river. Obviously, it’s been used as a rubbish dump. It was a useful place to chuck your household waste. It was essentially a busy highway, so people accidentally dropped things and lost things as they traveled on it. Of course, people also lived right up against it. London was centered on the Thames so houses were all along it, and there was all this stuff coming out of the houses and off the bridges. It was the biggest port in the world in the 18th century, so there was all the shipbuilding and industry going on.

"And then of course, there’s the rubbish that was used to build up the foreshore and create barge beds. The riverbed in its natural state is a V shape, so they had to build up the sides next to the river wall to make them flatter so the flat-bottom barges could rest there at low tide. They did that by pouring rubbish and building spoil and kiln waste, anything they could find—industrial waste, domestic waste. When they dug into the ground further up, they’d bring the spoil down and use it to build up the foreshore, and cap it off with a layer of chalk, which was soft and didn’t damage the bottom of the barges.

"One of the reasons we’re finding so much in the river now is because there’s so much erosion. While it was a “working river,” these barge beds were patched up and the revetments, or the wooden walls that held them in, were repaired when they broke. But now, they’re being left to fall apart, and these barge beds are eroding as the river is getting busier with river traffic.

"Every tide, something new will turn up, and the contents date right back to Roman times in central London. When they dug cellars or basements in the 18th and 19th centuries—this is when they created the barge beds—they’d dig down into medieval Roman layers, and then bring that spoil down to the river to build up the barge beds. So that’s possibly why we’re finding Roman objects next to Victorian objects next to Georgian objects. Such a mess of history in there.

"The beauty of the Thames is that it’s muddy and anaerobic, so if something falls into the mud, it’s preserved as perfectly as the day it fell in. It’s not too acidic, it’s not too alkaline, and no oxygen gets to it, which means there’s no degradation at all. It’s like suspended animation until you find it—it’s not like finding things in fields or archaeological digs. What we’re pulling out of the mud is pristine: Sometimes you’ll pull a pin out, and it’ll still be shiny, or you’ll find coins that have absolutely no damage on them at all, like they fell out of someone’s pocket yesterday. It’s incredible. Centuries-old leather and wood and even fabrics have been found, which is quite incredible. The key is, though, getting to it before it washes away or it starts to erode. The wave action starts to damage these objects."

Maiklem has found fossils, 16th-century gold, raspberry prunts, human bones, ancient coins, and even a glass eye. Read about mudlarking the Thames at Collectors Weekly.

(Image credit: Lara Maiklem)

Oh, we know what happens to cats when they get near catnip, but it's always fun to watch as they indulge -especially with psychedelic music and a few visual effects thrown in. It's totally harmless, because cats don't have to make it to work on time or impress their in-laws or or keep an eye on those burning candles. BBC Earth presents a montage of cats enjoying some nip from the series Pets: Wild At Heart. -via Digg

We love to read stories of heroic dogs who save lives, but you have to wonder- would your dog be so brave and helpful? Dogs are known for loyalty, but there is a wide variation in dogs (as in people) when it comes to loyalty, empathy, bravery, and maybe most of all, intelligence. Scientists put a bunch of dogs to the tests to see if they would "rescue" their humans.

For the main challenge, called the “distress test,” dog owners were placed inside a large box, where they pretended to be trapped and in distress. The owners, who were trained beforehand to sound realistic, cried out to their pets, shouting “help!” or “help me!” Dogs were able to rescue their owners by opening a light-weight door on the box, but they had to figure that out for themselves.

A total of 60 dogs participated in the experiment, none of whom received any kind of special rescue training prior to the experiment. Of these, 20, or one-third, rescued their owners, “which doesn’t sound too impressive on its own, but really is impressive when you take a closer look,” said Van Bourg, in reference to the two control tests used for the experiment. The dogs participated in the two control tests and one rescue test in random order.

It turns out that figuring out how to do it is crucial. Dogs who learned how to open the box under other circumstances were very much more likely to rescue their humans. So your dog would most likely want to save you ...if he could figure out how. Read how the experiment showed that at Gizmodo.

(Image credit: Flickr user torbakhopper)

When working on anything having to do with a computer, it is best to 1. backup your work first, 2. make edits on a copy, and 3. get cozy with your "undo" button, and allow time to consider using it. There are times when all these steps are skipped, and the worst thing possible happens. Tom Scott explains his most egregious "onosecond." The story is a couple of minutes shorter than the video.

Mother Nature is sometimes a prankster. The caterpillar that will eventually turn into the moth Uraba lugens is called the mad haterpillar because it grows its own hat, out of its own shed exoskeletons! This video is really only a minute long, then host Steve Mould discusses future episodes. -via Geekologie

No matter what the situation, there will be someone who figures out a way to illegally profit from it. Julia Lyons was one of those, a longtime swindler who, when she was arrested, would just slip away and change her name to one of her many aliases and con someone else. During the flu epidemic of 1918, Lyons had an idea that made her shenanigans easier.

As The Washington Post reports, Chicago was in the throes of the 1918 influenza pandemic that fall, and hospitals were enlisting nurses to tend to patients at home. Lyons, correctly assuming that healthcare officials wouldn’t be vetting volunteers very thoroughly, registered as a nurse under several pseudonyms and spent the next two months caring for a string of ailing men and women across the city.

Lyons’s modus operandi was simple: After getting a prescription filled, she’d charge her patient much more than the actual cost. Once, she claimed $63 for a dose of oxygen that had actually cost $5 (which, once adjusted for inflation, is the same as charging $1077 for an $85 item today). Sometimes, “Flu Julia,” as the Chicago Tribune nicknamed her, even summoned a so-called doctor—later identified by the police as a “dope seller and narcotic supplier”—to forge the prescriptions for her. Then she’d flee the property, absconding with cash, jewelry, clothing, and any other valuables she could find lying around the house.

Read the story of "Flu Julia" and the police manhunt launched to stop her at Mental Floss.

(Unrelated image credit: Harris & Ewing)

Notorious mobster James Joseph "Whitey" Bulger Jr. had been a force in Boston's organized crime scene since the 1940s. When he claimed millions in lottery winnings in 1991, few who knew him were surprised, and many thought he deserved it.  

The lottery win had been another one of Bulger’s brilliant schemes to launder his drug, extortion, and loan-sharking money. Back in the summer of 1991, a winning Mass Millions lottery ticket had been purchased at the South Boston Liquor Mart by Michael Linskey, who was the brother of a Bulger underling named Patrick Linskey. The FBI had learned that once Whitey heard about the jackpot, he ordered the real winner to sign the ticket over, with Whitey and two associates paying $2.3 million cash for 50 percent of the winnings. Bulger himself paid Michael Linskey $700,000. Although Linskey lost money in the deal, he really had no choice. It came down to selling the ticket or risking his life.

The winnings set Bulger up with a legitimate annuity, set to last until 2010. But the feds wanted that money, and wanted Bulger even more. Read about Whitey Bulger's lottery winnings at CrimeReads. -via Damn Interesting

(Image credit: Federal Bureau of Prisons)

The caption to the above picture begins: "A snoot that gets Eris into any trouble she wants, and eyes that get her out." Meet Eris, a Borzoi wolfhound. That's a large, long-limbed breed, but Lily and Savannah had no idea Eris' nose would be so far out there when they adopted her as a puppy two years ago. But Eris grew up to be a magnificent dog, and has become an Instagram star.



Read about Eris at Bored Panda, and see more pictures at Instagram.

It takes a special person to teach kindergarten, and Miss Kittenger is the kind of teacher we could all use. Her class was upended when she had to teach via Zoom to her kindergarten students at their homes, so she wanted to do something special to end the year. I would call this virtual class extra-special. -via Digg

There were 33 children aboard the Mayflower when it sailed to America in 1620. Among those were John Billlington Jr. and his brother Francis. They were not good little Pilgrims, and archives of their rambunctiousness survives 400 years later. The ship hadn't even arrived in Massachusetts when the scandalous behavior started. From a journal written by William Bradford and Edward Winslow:

“The fifth day [of December, 1620] we through God’s mercy escaped a great danger by the foolishness of a boy, one Francis of Billington’s sonnes, who in his father’s absence had got gun powder and shot off a piece [musket] or two and made squibs [small fireworks], and there being a fowling piece charged in his father’s cabbin, shot her off in the cabbin. There being a little barrell of [gun] powder halfe full scattered in and about the cabbin, the fire [discharge] being within foure foote of the bed [bunk] betweene decks and many flints and iron things about and so many people about the fire. And yet by God’s mercy no harme was done.”

But that was minor compared to his brother John, who later went missing in the woods. He was eventually rescued by Native Americans, which caused a diplomatic problem. And their parents? Also troublemakers. Read about the Billington family at Genealogy Bank. -via Strange Company

Colin Furze found his own way to hover around, but back in 1959, you could zip along in Curtiss-Wright Model 2500 Air-Car. Or maybe not, as there were only two built. Curtiss-Wright is an aircraft company, but delved into experimental vehicles for the military, including this hover car.

Each engine was used to drive, via reduction gears, a single four-bladed lift fan placed within a plenum chamber. The two chambers created a cushion of air 10-15 inches thick. Forward propulsion was supplied by air bled off the chambers and expelled at low velocity through two sets of louvers on each side of the vehicle.

It was fairly maneuverable and could reach speeds up to 38 mph. It was not really capable of all-terrain operation and never caught on commercially.

It was big and heavy and pretty cool, but that seemed to be about ll it had going for it. Both prototype models are still in existence. Read more at Vintage Everyday. -via Nag on the Lake

Every week, planes drop millions of sterilized screwworms over the border of Panama and Colombia, creating a transcontinental "barrier" to the pests far, far away from the U.S.

Here's one of the planes getting loaded with chilled boxes of adult screwworms:

3/ pic.twitter.com/VvDxx86fDG

— Sarah Zhang (@sarahzhang) May 26, 2020

You may have never heard of screwworms, but they are horrible parasites that eat animal flesh. They were once the scourge of livestock, wildlife, and pets alike, and occasionally infected humans. But scientists developed a program 70 years ago to rid North America of screwworms.  

The man who came up with the scheme, and believed in it most passionately, was Edward F. Knipling, a USDA entomologist who, in the 1930s, spent long hours watching screwworms mate. As a boy, he had waged constant war against insect pests on his family’s Texas farm. “Every plant that we grew,” he later said, “there was some type of insect that was causing damage.” Screwworms infected the farm’s cows and pigs, and Knipling remembered them as one of the worst pests. He had to climb into the hog pens to smear medicine on the wounds of uncooperative sows. “That was a very unpleasant task,” he recalled some eight decades later, in an interview shortly before he died.

Adult screwworms are actually flies, with big red eyes and metallic blue-green bodies. After mating, the females lay their eggs in open wounds, and the resulting larvae eat through a ring of surrounding flesh. Once sufficiently engorged, the larvae drop off the wounds to pupate, emerging as a new generation of flies. As Knipling watched screwworms churn through their life cycle in his government laboratory, he made an observation whose importance he could intuit but not yet put to use: Female screwworms mate only once in their entire life. If a female screwworm mates with a sterile male, she will never have any offspring. So if the environment could somehow be saturated with sterile males, Knipling surmised, screwworms would very quickly mate themselves out of existence.

Raising, feeding, sterilizing, and distributing screwworms by the millions was not easy, but once they figured out how to do it, it was effective. Read about the screwworm eradication program, which continues today, at the Atlantic. The very abbreviated version is at Twitter.  -via Metafilter

It's 2020, and we were supposed to have flying cars, or at least flying hover boards by now. Crazy inventor Colin Furze (previously) took matters into his own hands to make a Back to the Future 2 experience happen. He took one of the hover boards made to commemorate the film and made it really hover by using a jetpack and two small jetpacks on his arms! He shows us how he did it, but if you want, you can skip to 6:00 to see him fly. That's a lot of equipment to carry around, but he's flying and we're not.  -via Geekologie

The more we learn about the depths of the earth's oceans, the more we realize there is so much more we don't know. And that's one reason the deep sea is a great setting for movies- it provides adventure, danger, tension, and fear of the unknown. But ocean movies often take liberties, because most folks (both filmmakers and audience) don't know much about what really goes on down there. The Ringer talked to marine biologist Dr. Stephen Kajiura of Florida Atlantic University to find out how realistic Hollywood movies are, like the ones that feature giant unknown monsters from the deepest trenches.

There’s just not enough energy down there for them. The bigger you are, you need a lot of calories. And there’s just not that much productivity in a deep-sea environment to be able to support big organisms. Also the bigger you are, you feed farther down on the food chain. Think of whales. Whales are the biggest thing in the ocean but they feed on little tiny plankton, krill, things like that. And they need to be feeding on these little tiny things because you need a lot of it to support their massive size.

As you get bigger and bigger and bigger—the whale sharks, the basking sharks, they’re all filter feeders. When they show these giant, enormous things that are out for human blood, it’s not going to work. Energetically, you can’t make that sustainable. You can’t be that big and still need to eat near the top of the food chain. There’s just not going to be enough out there to support you.  

Kajiura explains movie inaccuracies about sea creatures, pressures, actual ocean exploration, and how marine biologists are depicted in movies ranging from The Abyss to Aquaman to Deep Blue Sea to Finding Nemo at the Ringer. -via Digg